


The Light Goes Out

by gala_apples



Category: Angel: the Series, Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Apocalypse, Character Death, Depression, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In season four of Angel, The Beast blots out the sun in LA, which lets vampires and all other demons roam free. You see it from the perspective of demon/vampire hunters, and it sucks to be them. It sucks even more to be an innocent citizen of LA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light Goes Out

**Author's Note:**

> Pete's actions are not meant to be character bashing. As the child of a parent with heavy depression, this is bitterly realistic.

Patrick parks his car as close to the front door as he can. He tries to look around through his windows, but they’re tinted and it’s dark as night outside, even though the tiny red numbers on the dash say it’s only 2:37. He can’t really see anyone, but there’s no telling how quickly they can move, or if they can be bats or something else that can hide in the blackness. There are billions of Googleable pages of lore, and most contradict each other.

Still, in the end it doesn’t matter. He’s here, he actually fucking made it here without a fist pummeling through the glass and pulling him out of the car, the exact thing he saw happen to a dozen now dead strangers. Being killed on the way here shouldn’t mean anything different than being killed with his hand on the doorbell, but it does. It means he tried, and it means it’s almost okay.

He grabs his piece of fence from the passenger seat, opens the door and sprints towards the front of the house. There’s a light on so he only knocks on the door, instead of ringing the doorbell. If Bronx or Ashlee is napping he doesn’t want to be the reason for them waking up. After a minute he can see his face, blurred behind the stained glass cut out of the door.

The door opens and Pete doesn’t move. “Can I come in?” Patrick asks irritably, just before remembering that these days that question is likely to get your heart stabbed with a broken piece of MDF.

“Yeah, come in.”

Pete moves and Patrick steps through the threshold. The moment his feet are on the shoe mat he hits Pete. His eyes are set into his face in the ‘awake for three days, about to mentally crash’ position Patrick knows all too well, but he doesn’t let it stop him from taking his swing, and connecting true.

“What the fuck!” Pete is scowling at him, hand pressed to his chest, but Patrick knows better. Patrick’s seen a lifetime of angry Pete, and this isn’t it. This is Pete pretending to get mad so people will back off and leave him alone. Patrick doesn’t tend to fall for it, but this time he’s actually pissed, compared to Pete’s chicanery.

“What the fuck to you! Everyone out there has to ask permission to come in! How did you know I’m not one of them?”

‘Well you weren’t so it’s fine.” Pete meets his angry gaze head on.

“No.” Patrick is not having that shit for a second. “How did you _know_.”

“I wouldn’t have cared if you were.” Before Patrick can respond to that Pete continues. “She texted me. She told me that all the blond bitches that look like Jessica taste like her too. I thought if she was one and you were one I might as well be.”

Which is all fucking fine and good if they’re on set for the Sixteen Candles vid, but this is real life, and this is different. “What about Bronx?” 

Pete shrugs. His eyes don’t fill with shame, Patrick knows at this point Pete’s totally beyond that. Shame is a personal feeling, and Pete’s shutting down. “I figured once I was a vampire I wouldn’t care.”

Patrick can’t help it. He pulls his arm back and crashes it forward. Pete’s on the ground, half sitting on a dozen pairs of shoes. Patrick is standing over him, though he doesn’t remember taking those few steps forward. He’s distinctly aware he’s shouting at him and he hopes the difference in floors is enough to not wake up Bronx. “Your fucking son! This isn’t Fall Out Boy, you don’t have time to crash. There’s no fucking room to cycle! You’re not going to be one of them. You’re going to man the fuck up.”

Christ, it’s so much easier to shout it than it is to make it come true. The manic side of Pete might make stupid choices, but it’s still easier to deal with than the depressed side. Manic Pete can sometimes listen to reason, Depressed Pete just shrivels until everything else goes away.

“Like I’d do him any good by myself.” Patrick mentally sighs in relief. Self loathing. He can deal with self loathing. It might be awful to feel, but it’s still feeling, which means Patrick’s still got a chance to fight before he slips into complete disinterest.

“Right, because you’re alone now. Stop being so damn stupid. Do you know how many of those things I had to run over on my way here? It would have been a lot easier to stay home. But I’m here.” Patrick could go on about a dozen other people that would try, if they were in LA. Gabe, Andy and Joe, probably all of the Panic boys. But the fact is they’re not here, and hypotheticals won’t help Pete when he’s like this.

“You ran over them?”

“None of them looked like her. I don’t think any of them were-”

“Patrick, she’s fucking gone. It wouldn’t matter if it was her, because it wouldn’t be her.”

Patrick looks down at Pete, sprawled over sneakers and high heels, a fist mark on his face, crying, and refuses to feel sorry for him. Crying is better than nothing, and he knows how quickly Pete can slip into nothingness. But he holds out his hand, and Pete takes it to lever himself into standing. Once he’s standing he buries his face into his neck. Patrick stands there, grateful for the tears.

Eventually Pete pulls back. He makes no move to wipe his nose or eyes on his sweater, just grips Patrick, each hand digging fingers into the fleshy part of his upper arm, hard enough to bruise.

“It wasn’t just her you know. I called and you didn’t answer. You always answer, ever since.” Pete doesn’t have to finish his sentence for them to both think of parking lots. “I figured-”

“Yeah, I dropped it the first time I saw a guy rip someone’s throat out with their teeth. I ran and I wasn’t going to go back for it.”

And suddenly his mouth is on him, his tongue trying to push into him. It shouldn’t surprise Patrick. It’s not the first time Pete’s done it, or even the twentieth. Pretty much every time Pete has some kind of crisis he tries to make out with him. Patrick would joke about it being a shitty coping mechanism but all his others are worse.

It’s not like Patrick hasn’t ever considered it. It’s just he’d mean it and it’s so obvious Pete could never. He doesn’t even like dick. So Patrick always sidles out of it with a joke, or a light shove on the shoulder. Or sometimes, if he thinks Pete would react better, a punch.

But now it’s different. If Ashlee’s really dead, worse, if Ashlee’s really one of _them_ , then Pete’s going to need him. Christ, he’s already got the proof of it with Pete being too depressed to care about Bronx. If he has to put up with Pete having a big gay freak out later, so be it. It’s better than Pete inviting any fanged girl guide scouts into his house.

So, for the first time in their long years together, Patrick puts his hands on Pete’s hips instead of using them to wrench him away. His opens his mouth to let him in instead of to swear at him. He goes with it, because it’s better than the alternative.


End file.
